‘Wuthering Heights’ Slays as Cronenbergian Body Horror
Love it or hate it, Wuthering Heights is scorching hot right now. The controversial adaptation of Emily Brontë’s book has captured the attention of woke Lit Girls who are trying to cancel director Emerald Fennell, and people who needed Galentine’s Day plans last weekend alike. Saltburn truthers, period-piece hate-watchers, and boyfriends dragged along translated into Fennell’s movie scooping up $83 million globally on its opening weekend. And my God, there’s so much to unpack – especially when it comes to horror and not counting the situationship that spans decades and wrecks homes.
The haunted house allusion is obvious. See: All the hot alt girls and bookish baddies who have been using Charli XCX’s trending audio “House,” featuring John Cale. This song from the Wuthering Heights has soundtracked many a melodramatic, gothic horror shenanigan. The fact that decrepit, soul-sucking houses should be a major motif is no surprise: After all, Brontë’s book is named after the estate at the center of the story. So much chaos and destruction go down inside the walls of the house that, as a reader, you feel it must be haunted long before any of the characters even die. But just like a lot of iconic horror stories, like Rosemary’s Baby ormother!, the house and the body are haunted together.
My hot take is that if you measure Wuthering Heights as a body horror movie — not an adaptation of a classic 19th-century tale or even a romantic drama — Emerald Fennell made a fantastic film.
The wet, sticky, oozing Wuthering Heights
This version ofWuthering Heights is not as austere and rustic as in past film adaptations. Fennell’s film has a sort of jaunty, menacing style that reminds you of a Tim Burton movie or the mind of Guillermo del Toro. The dark gothic exteriors juxtaposed against scarlet feel like a direct visual reference to Crimson Peak.
But just as Wuthering Heights’ production design feels whimsical and threatening at the same time, so does the way that Fennell handles the body. The camera lingers on scarred backs; Margot Robbie’s flushed cheeks often feel like a centerpiece.
Less romantic, possibly: Cathy Earnshaw hears the squeals and squelches of a pig being slaughtered, and has to traipse through a pool of blood. The red lingers at the hem of her dress, which feels like it’s in conversation with Elizabeth’s bloodied gown in Frankenstein.
The movie is also incredibly wet in a decidedly unsexy way. You can almost feel the mist in the moors settling on your tongue, or the rain soaking through your clothes and making everything muddy. Having read Wuthering Heights, the book, I appreciate this aspect of Fennell’s adaptation the most. Brontë’s text is steeped in chronic illness, from addiction and depression, to creaky limbs and faint hearts. Fennell’s film is a true body horror movie, in that it feels like a damp mucus that sticks in your lungs.
Spit, drool, and runny yolks are also visual motifs in Wuthering Heights. This movie is pointedly sticky, seemingly drawing inspiration from Hellraiser, with its metaphysical goop, and Possession, with its milky miscarriage scene in the subway. Even if the textures are played for sex appeal, this version of Wuthering Heights makes you want to scrub yourself clean.
Overall, there’s a nasty viscerality to her adaptation of Wuthering Heights, where you’re literally and figuratively crawling around in the muck. See: Isabella Linton chained up like a dog, and enjoying it. (And to be honest, a 6’4” man who’s a little rough around the edges, has golds in his mouth and is wearing slutty knee boots could make a lot of us crawl around on the ground, actually.)
But more than being wrapped up in the “chains of love” or whatever Charli XCX is on about, you’re immersed in a world that is dirty and seedy, even when the exterior is glossy.
The stifling luxury of Thurcross Grange
Most of the actively gross, cloying feeling happens at the Wuthering Heights estate, but Fennell is sure to bring the body horror to Thurcross Grange, the Lintons’ squeaky-clean, luxurious home.
It’s nothing like the drafty, broken-down, unforgiving scrap of land where Cathy and Heathcliff grew up. But the blood red floors and hands stretching forth from the walls — and the way it’s all shot at wide, off-putting angles — hint that Thurcross Grange is a different kind of haunted.
When Cathy marries Edgar Linton, it’s clear that it is a gilded cage. And true to the book, Cathy Earnshaw embraces her marriage to Edgar Linton but jumps at the chance to keep Heathcliff around when he returns to the moors.
There’s that uncomfortable claustrophobia of your current partner and your ex — or your partner and your secret, sordid little crush — sharing space. That awkwardness and uncouthness permeate the movie. And after a while, it’s suffocating.
Of course, the most obvious way that Wuthering Heights is a body horror movie is that Fennell made a key creative decision for Cathy’s bedroom. In her version of events, Edgar decides to draw inspiration from his new wife’s skin as her wallpaper — down to the mole, he says chipperly.
As the film progresses, you see that the room isn’t just a soft, fleshy pink with the occasional mole, but it has veins and pores. As a viewer, you must suspend your disbelief for historical accuracy, as you did with the costumes. But as with many anachronistic choices, this one is brilliant — and uncomfortable.
Cathy’s “skin room” isn’t just a Cronenbergian act of Edgar’s love. It feels symbolic of the fact that all the interpersonal drama that compounds and drives Cathy mad is actually her fault. The skin room symbolizes that Cathy is in a prison of her own making.
And to drive the point home, somehow, Fennell shoots the room so that skin feels like it itches.
The skin room feels too tight. The skin room prickles. The skin room sweats — which Fennell’s freaky version of Heathcliff can’t help but lick up. And when, spoiler, Cathy dies, the skin room becomes emblematic of antiquated decay. You’ll notice that the leeches that were brought in to bleed out the sickness of Cathy’s body had gotten “confused” and had started sucking on the walls themselves.
When you watch Wuthering Heights, are you going to get a movie that makes you feel good about love? About the realities of the class war? About Emerald Fennell as someone you want to have a beer with? No, probably. But you will leave with a new appreciation for how gnarly and revolting Wuthering Heights is as a text — and for the price of a dozen eggs.
Categorized:Editorials